I am really just starting to understand the power of government transparency. A bill this last legislative session that would have placed school districts’ check book registers online was killed. Keep in mind this information is all “open to public inspection” through the Colorado Open Records Act now, so why did school districts fight so hard to avoid making that info easy to access for all taxpayers? Could it be that once the governmental books are opened up to anyone with a computer, then anyone could become an auditor. Imagine 5 million citizens looking into the books for waste, mistakes and corruption?

I normally don’t use this space on the Cauldron to ask for help, but we’ve been tasked with what they call a “challenge grant.” What this means is that if we can raise $25,000 for transparency in Colorado, we get an additional $25,000. Not too shabby huh? So far we’ve raised about $23,000, so we need just $2,000 more. This is where you come in. We all know Ritter and friends just love using the word transparency but fear nothing more than letting you, the taxpayer, know just exactly how they are spending your money. Our Amy Cooke has already promised to bring back transparency in education spending, in addition to other sunshine measures. The fight we could wage on behalf of COST would be enormous with this money.